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Fairfax Underground
Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
Interesting Time Article on Tysons Development Plan
Posted by:
curious
()
Date: July 06, 2009 11:15PM
Old, but still interesting-
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1904187-1,00.html
There's something deeply wrong with Tysons Corner. For starters, Virginia's bustling commercial district — the 12th biggest employment center in the nation — has more parking spaces than jobs or residents. What was a quaint intersection of two country roads 50 years ago is now a two-tiered interchange with 10 lanes of traffic-choked hell; try to cross it on foot, and you're taking your life into your hands. Located about 14 miles west of downtown Washington, the nearly 1,700-acre area is home to fortresses of unfriendly buildings surrounded by oceans of parking lots, as well as single-story car dealerships, strip malls, fast-food joints, highways and a big toll road. Pedestrians are personae non gratae here. What few sidewalks exist often abruptly end.
. . .
The blueprint, which has been four years in the making and calls for a dense, walkable green city, is a model of public-private partnership and the largest such undertaking in the country. The implications of this redevelopment project stretch far beyond Fairfax County, as suburbs and exurbs across the country look for ways to repair the damage from five decades of outward, rather than upward, expansion. There are scores of so-called edge cities that have popped up near urban centers, suburbs on steroids that often grew around a giant mall — like King of Prussia, Pa. (outside Philadelphia), and Schaumburg, Ill. (Chicago). "If Tysons can be retrofitted, then there's great hope for a lot of others," says June Williamson, an associate professor of architecture at the City College of New York and a co-author of Retrofitting Suburbia.
. . .
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1904187-1,00.html
There's something deeply wrong with Tysons Corner. For starters, Virginia's bustling commercial district — the 12th biggest employment center in the nation — has more parking spaces than jobs or residents. What was a quaint intersection of two country roads 50 years ago is now a two-tiered interchange with 10 lanes of traffic-choked hell; try to cross it on foot, and you're taking your life into your hands. Located about 14 miles west of downtown Washington, the nearly 1,700-acre area is home to fortresses of unfriendly buildings surrounded by oceans of parking lots, as well as single-story car dealerships, strip malls, fast-food joints, highways and a big toll road. Pedestrians are personae non gratae here. What few sidewalks exist often abruptly end.
. . .
The blueprint, which has been four years in the making and calls for a dense, walkable green city, is a model of public-private partnership and the largest such undertaking in the country. The implications of this redevelopment project stretch far beyond Fairfax County, as suburbs and exurbs across the country look for ways to repair the damage from five decades of outward, rather than upward, expansion. There are scores of so-called edge cities that have popped up near urban centers, suburbs on steroids that often grew around a giant mall — like King of Prussia, Pa. (outside Philadelphia), and Schaumburg, Ill. (Chicago). "If Tysons can be retrofitted, then there's great hope for a lot of others," says June Williamson, an associate professor of architecture at the City College of New York and a co-author of Retrofitting Suburbia.
. . .